Each computer on the internet has their identifying number, the IP address.
But the most easy way for people to locate computers and their resources
on the Internet -as web sites or mailboxes- is assigning a name. A consistent
name used for referring to resources is the "host name." The convention
for host name is a name with structure indicated by dots. The last portion
of a host name, the suffix, is the "domain," "domain name," or "top-level
domain" to which the host belongs.

Up to last decision of ICANN, the three-letter top-level domains (TLDs)
were .com, .net, .org, .edu, .int, .mil and .gov. In addition, there are
two-letter top-level domains for each country (ccTLDs), based on the ISO
3166-1 two-letter country codes, and a special domain .ARPA which currently
contains some Internet infrastructure databases.

the domain name system or dns

"Is a distributed Internet directory service. DNS is used mostly to translate
between domain names and IP addresses, and to control Internet email delivery.
Most Internet services rely on DNS to work, and if DNS fails, web sites
cannot be located and email delivery stalls." From *DNS
Resources Directory*

how dns works

The domain name system is an internet protocol and a global network of servers
around the world, running DNS software -the most popular program is BIND-.
This servers contains a distributed database of host names and their corresponding
IP addresses, which computers on the Net use to communicate with each other.
At the top of the DNS tree-structured database are the "root name servers"
for each of the top-level domains.

If one DNS server doesn't know a particular domain name, it asks another
one, and so on, until the correct IP address is returned. This queries are
known as "Name Resolution."

dns origin

"Hosts in the ARPA Internet (were) registered with the Network Information
Center (NIC) and listed in a global table (available as the file HOSTS.TXT
on the SRI-NIC host). The size of this table, and especially the frequency
of updates to the table are near the limit of manageability. What is needed
is a distributed database that performs the same function, and hence avoids
the problems caused by a centralized database." *Paul
Mockapetris, Request for Comments 882*.

dns history

Paul Mockapetris designed DNS in 1984 to solve escalating problems with
the old name-to-address mapping system. "A major shift occurred as a result
of the increase in scale of the Internet and its associated management issues.
To make it easy for people to use the network, hosts were assigned names,
so that it was not necessary to remember the numeric addresses. Originally,
there were a fairly limited number of hosts, so it was feasible to maintain
a single table of all the hosts and their associated names and addresses.
The shift to having a large number of independently managed networks meant
that having a single table of hosts was no longer feasible, and the Domain
Name System was invented by Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI. The DNS permitted
a scalable distributed mechanism for resolving hierarchical host names (e.g.
www.acm.org) into an Internet address." From *A
brief history of the internet*.

administration of domains

DNS is a hierarchical, administratively controlled namespace. New suffixes
have been under consideration since the mid-1990, but disputes remained
over how many, which ones and who gets to register new names. You can follow
mostly part of this dispute in the *Domain
Name Systems Information and Press Releases*.

"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a technical
coordination body for the Internet. Created in October 1998 by a broad coalition
of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities, ICANN
is assuming responsibility for a set of technical functions previously performed
under U.S. government contract by IANA and other groups. Specifically, ICANN
coordinates the assignment of the following identifiers that must be globally
unique for the Internet to function: Internet domain names, IP address numbers,
protocol parameter and port numbers. In addition, ICANN coordinates the
stable operation of the Internet's root server system." From *ICANN
Home Page*.

multilingual domain names

"Until now, domain names have been restricted to a subset of the Roman character
set (A to Z), the digits 0 through 9, and a few punctuation symbols. Non-Roman
domain names have already crept into the Internet via smaller operators.
For example, i-DNS Inc., based at the National University of Singapore,
has developed technology to offer domain names -- including Arabic, Chinese,
Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, Russian, and Thai. So how do users type in such
domain names? They work in the appropriate Unicode character set, which
is translated into a conventional ASCII numerical address at the domain
name registry level, according to i-DNS. The only requirement is that the
user has an Internet service provider with an i-DNS-compatible name server,
or sets up the Internet account to use i-DNS's own name server. i-DNS also
offers software that converts the Unicode address to the corresponding ASCII
domain name at the client end. In this way, i-DNS is backward-compatible
with DNS, according to the company, whose technology is being used by other
ventures to sell domain names in a variety of character sets." From *Building
The Tower Of Babel: The Web Goes Truly Global By Barnaby Page, TechWeb News*.

VeriSign announced that its Network Solutions domain name registration division
began registering multilingual domain names -Chinese, Japanese and Korean
language domain names- for the first time in a multilingual testbed. *Network
Solutions' Registrar Offers Multilingual Domain Names for the First Time,
November 10, 2000*. Inmediately, China's Ministry of Information Industry
vests the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) with sole authority
over registration of Chinese-character domain names.

"The Internet Society strongly urges caution in the execution of activity
regarding the use of non-English character sets for the registration of
domain names. The Society further urges all parties to allow the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group on internationalized domain
names to complete its work, before allowing the public to register such
names." From *Domain
Names Complicated by Non-English Character Sets*, November 8, 2000,
ISOC's Press Release.

A new web addressing system atop the existing DNS is being introduced by
RealNames Corporation. Their keyword technology is a Web addressing and
navigation system that uses common names in place of URL Web addresses.
The system is designed to conform to emerging IETF standards known as Common
Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP) and Universal Description, Discovery and
Integration (UDDI). "Internet Keywords overcome the limitations of URL Web
addresses because they support local language character sets with Unicode,
extend easily to new Web-enabled devices, handle diverse types of data beyond
text and pages, scale globally as resources are added to the network, are
more efficient in their use of bandwidth, and present an intuitive, user-friendly
interface to consumers." RealNames' plan would be an entirely private name
registration system, compared with the current semi-privatized domain name
system. *RealNames
announces move to open registry for its keyword system* .

name spaces in peer-to-peer infrastructure

"Any system that translates names into Internet numbers is a name space.
Napster is a name space: When you register on Napster, you assign a name
to your computer. When another Napster user wants to communicate with you,
the Napster server translates this name into the Internet address of your
computer. The Napster server acts as a name server and a search engine,
all using proprietary protocols. (The underlying protocols are, of course,
the standard Internet protocols.) Users sign up on a Napster server with
whatever name they want to use. Registration is instant, free, and requires
no contact or other personal information. Napster shows no interest in the
trademark issues that have roiled the DNS world, and has no quasi-judicial
process to settle name disputes: The first mover gets the name. Even if
you don't have a permanent IP address, you can still register on Napster
and play, after a fashion. Napster's search engine searches this name space
and links to files, all using proprietary protocols. Napster's chat service
also uses this space." From *"Napster:
Popular Program Raises Devilish Issues" by Erik Nilsson*